Saturday, 25 October 2014

On this the tenth anniversary of the death of John Peel I’ve been
rummaging through my press cuttings box and came across this interview with
Robert Chalmers from the short-lived The
Sunday Correspondent.In fact the interview later gained some notoriety, particularly when part of it was quoted in a Julie Burchill article. I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions. This is the full
feature as published on 5 November 1989.

Saturday, 18 October 2014

Christmas has arrived early! On Thursday the BBC’s GenomeProject released nearly ninety year’s worth of Radio Times listings. I predict many a lost hour, make that day, blowing
the virtual dust off long-forgotten programme schedules.

Sadly, due to copyright problems, there are no scans of the actual
magazines; so my collection at least retains some value. I can still drop in
the odd article, piece of artwork or advert to blog posts (see above). And to be honest
there’s something satisfying about seeing the different typefaces and layouts
of the listings over the years. But the ability to search and order the
programme details on this online Beta version is an absolute boon to
researchers and the idly curious alike.

The OCR software does throw up some odd spellings – this is
one of many I’ve found in the first day. Readers are invited to submit edits –
I’ve done a 100 or so already. Apparently there are some verification processes
in place to ensure that the edits are indeed just corrections rather than an
attempt to improve the entry, adding episode titles or missing cast members
were none existed at the time of going to print for example.

So what random fact can I find this morning? Well Brian Matthew,
currently on air as I publish this post started with the BBC in 1954. But in
1953 he presented a series of programmes on Music
from Holland, presumably as at the time he was still working for Radio Netherlands.

Friday, 17 October 2014

The ‘facts’ are as follows: It was broadcast via the “magic
of Lunewyre technology in total Spectrasound”. The hosts were the self-styled
Kid Tempo and The Ginger Prince – whose real identity was, at the time,
shrouded in mystery though we now know as Eli Hourd and Nigel Proctor. You
could enjoy the delights of the Hammond Organ interlude and radio’s only dance
troupe Peter Lorenzo and the Guys Now Dancers. It was Radio Tip Top.

It’s difficult to explain what was going on, even for those
of us that signed up for Radio Tip Top membership. It was retro but played
current hits. It was funny but had no discernible jokes. It aired at a time
when loungecore and easy listening were cool. Think Radio 1 Club meets Phoenix Nights
with a dash of Austin Powers.

Radio Tip Top had
started life as a weekly pirate radio show in London in 1993 and 1994. There
was press interest in the Tip Top phenomenon and in late 94 even an ITV pilot
show set onboard a giant spaceship. By April 1995 they’d gone legit and moved
to Radio 1 for a 12-week Wednesday night run. This is when I became hooked,
although I was probably initially drawn in by the old Radio 1 jingles that
punctuated proceedings.

For all you Tip Toppers and Tip Toppettes here are three
editions of your favourite show. From series one comes episode eight broadcast
on 14 June 1995 with Star Time guest
Sandie Shaw, redirection advice from Postman Patois, the Radio Tip Top Big Break Talent of Tomorrow featuring Ken Goodwin
and the Radio Tip Top Cabaret Cavalcade
with Ken Dodd “who always insists we pay him in cash”.

Episode nine of the first series features the vocal talents
of Tony Blackburn, The Bowling Queens Margaret and Maureen, Norman Barrington
with a TV Treat, rising talent Lenny
Kravitz, the Reverend Ray Floods from the Church of What’s Happening and the
headline act, Lulu.

And finally, for the moment, the tenth edition with the 1995 Radio Tip Top Summer Seaside Special.
Star Time features Naomi
Campbell,get down with Mr Superbad and
topping the bill is Britt Ekland.

I’ll be posting more
Radio Tip Top shows over the coming months.

Radio Tip Top
series details:

Series one: 12 weeks from 26 April to 12 July 1995Radio Tip Top
Christmas Cracker 25 December 1995
Series two: 14 weeks 3 January to 3 April 1996A Tip Top Christmas
25 December 1996

Friday, 10 October 2014

The opening
ceremony of summer Olympics in Tokyo was fifty years ago today. With the
distance and time difference involved it was possible for TV viewers in the UK
to receives some same-day pictures via the Syncom III satellite over the
Pacific. Late night BBC coverage of an hour
or so was in the capable hands of Cliff Michelmore, who also presented a
results round-up at teatime. Any daytime programmes, and this was by no means
every day, were hosted by Alan Weeks.

In addition
to the satellite images TV pictures also took the Polar route where events were
taped and flown from Tokyo each night over the Pole to arrive in Hamburg by 7
a.m. That tape was then transmitted over the Eurovision network to member
countries and on the Intervision network in Eastern Europe. The BBC team lead
by Peter Dimmock consisted of just twenty-five! Five commentators covered all
the sports: David Coleman, Max Robertson, Harry Carpenter, Peter West and Frank
Bough.

Meanwhile
over on BBC radio the sound reached the UK via the Commonwealth cable, Compac,
which linked Britain, Australia, and New Zealand via Canada and the Atlantic.
Commentary from Japan joined Compac from the trans-Pacific cable. The radio
team was a very small affair led by Head of OB Charles Max-Muller alongside
three producers, an engineer and a secretary.

Seven
commentators looked after the radio coverage: Harold Abraham and Rex Alston
covered the athletics, Alun Williams and Pat Besford the swimming, John Snagge
the rowing and sailing, Brian Moore the soccer and cycling and Raymond
Brookes-Ward the equestrian events.

Radio
programmes averaged about two hours a day across the Home, Light and Third,
with the lion’s share of the commentary and reports going out on the daytime
service of the Third Programme, known as the Third Network. Each day there was
an Olympic Report from 8.10 to 9.00
a.m. and an evening round-up from 6.00 to 6.30 p.m.

Some twenty
years after the Games of the XVIII Olympiad the gold-medal winning long-jumper
Lynn Davies recalled some key moments in Olympic Memories. You’ll also hear the
voices of British athletes Robbie Brightwell, Mary Rand, Anne Packer and Basil
Heatley, swimmer Bobbie MacGregor, US athlete Billy Mills, race walker Ken
Matthews, and weightlifter Louis Martin.

Olympic
Memories: Tokyo 1964 was broadcast on BBC Radio 2 on 25 March 1984. The
producer was Emily McMahon

Sunday, 5 October 2014

Though she’d
have probably denied it Sheila Tracy was something of a feminist pioneer by
working in what were, at the time, mostly male preserves: touring the country
with a big band; broadcasting on the Light Programme when few other women hosted
record shows; being the first woman to read the main news bulletins on national
radio and being the trucker’s friend on an overnight music show. With a
broadcasting career that spanned fifty years I remember Sheila Tracy who sadly
died earlier this week.

Born and
raised in Helston, Cornwall Sheila went on to study piano and violin at the
Royal Academy of Music “but soon realised I wasn’t going to become a concert
pianist.” Noticing that the brass section of the Academy’s orchestra didn’t
contain any women she plumped for the trombone, thus unwittingly launching a
long career as a professional trombonist.

Leaving the
Academy in 1956 Sheila joined the Ivy Benson All Girls Band. A year later she
and Phyl Brown, a vocalist in the Ivy Benson outfit, formed the Tracy Sisters.
They got their first break when they replaced the Kay Sisters on a Moss Empire
Variety tour with Mike and Bernie Winters. Their first radio broadcast was on
24 May 1958 on In Town Tonight. Other appearances followed on Workers Playtime, Mid-Day Music Hall and Saturday
Club.

Her move
into full-time broadcasting came in February 1961 when, with prompting from her
mother, she successfully applied to become an in-vision announcer on BBC TV,
joining the other women on the team: Meryl O’Keeffe, Valerie Pitts and Judith
Chalmers. When the BBC stopped using in-vision announcers Sheila worked on a
number of regional news shows: Spotlight
South-West in Plymouth, Points West
in Bristol and South Today in
Southampton.

Sheila also
worked with Michael Aspel on the BBC1 show A
Spoonful of Sugar which was broadcast from hospitals and where they would
surprise staff and patients with people they wanted to meet. She recalled on
programme where “we had fixed for Mike Yarwood to be hidden in the corner of
the ward while I was talking to the patient. The cameras started to roll and I
go into my spiel about how much red tape we’ve had to cut to get this special
guest on the programme. Mike then does his impression of Harold Wilson. ‘And
who do you think this is?’ I ask the patient. Obviously very excited she
goes….’Ooh Ooh…it’s…Freddie Frinton’ Poor Mike Yarwood was absolutely
devastated. Harold Wilson was his favourite impersonation. However it was all
quite hilarious and all went out just as it happened!”

An early Radio Times billing for Sheila from
March 1963. Late Choice was a 20 minute Sunday night show.

Meanwhile
Sheila was picking up some radio work on the Light Programme. Her first solo
broadcast was in February 1963 on the Sunday night show Late Choice. “I wasn’t
allowed to play anything loud or fast”, she recalled. There were also
appearances on Melody Fair, Anything Goes, Music for Late Night People and, in 1967, one of the presenters of It’s One O’Clock billed as “music for
late night people” and produced by Aidan Day.

In October
1973 Sheila joined BBC Radio 4 as a staff announcer – making her first
appearance on the 8th of that month (most websites incorrectly state 1974). She
later claimed that she had made the move with “the express purpose of doing a
breakthrough in news.” That breakthrough came on the evening of 16 July 1974
with a certain amount of subterfuge on the part of Presentation Editor Jim
Black. Colin Doran was reading the early evening news and Bryan Martin was due
to take over the late shift, as was the pattern at that time. Sheila was
already on the rota to do that evening’s continuity when at the last minute a
switch was made with Bryan supposedly being ill Sheila stepped in to read the
late-night news bulletin.Thereafter she
became a regular newsreader on the network.

Whilst the
press made a fuss about Sheila reading the Radio 4 news she wasn’t, of course,
the first woman to actually read a news bulletin on the radio. In the regions
it had long being the practice to have female news readers and even on national
radio Angela Buckland, Ann Every and Patricia Hughes, to name but three, had
for years being reading the early morning bulletins on the Home Service and on
Radio 3. However, it did open the way for the likes of Susan Denny, Pauline
Bushnall and Laurie MacMillan to become regular readers on the station.

In 1977
Sheila moved across to BBC Radio 2, again as a continuity announcer and
newsreader – making her first appearance on 21 January – but also having the
opportunity to present a number of music shows. Firstly there was The Late Show and the overnight You and the Night and the Music as well
as Saturday Night with the BBC Radio
Orchestra and The Early Show
(weekends in 1982/83).

This clip of
You and the Night and the Music is
from 4 April 1980. With apologies for the slightly dodgy tape.

But it was Big Band Special that proved to be the
long-running success. Initially planned as a 12-part series it ran for 34 years
(1979-2013), with Sheila at the helm for nearly 22 of them. For the first
couple of programmes the featured band was Nelson’s Column before the BBC Radio
Big Band took up residency under the baton of Barry Forgie, himself a
trombonist, as was the show’s first producer Robin Sedgley and even the second
producer Bob McDowall.

From 1987
the BBC Radio Big Band started to undertake a number of tours in addition to
its regular recording commitments. Occasionally Sheila, who’d compere about 50
concerts a year, would herself fill the gap on trombone if an additional player
was needed or even conduct the band if Barry Forgie fancied a turn on his
trombone. She also played with the BBC Club’s Ariel Band and the Delta Jazz
Band. The highlight of her time with the show was the 1992 three-week tour of
America with guest star George Shearing. Sheila’s last appearance as host of Big Band Special was in 2001 when she
was replaced by jazz singer Stacey Kent.

Here from 12
February 1990 is the 500th edition of Big
Band Special. For these live concerts Sheila would put in lots of
preparation and learn her script beforehand so that she wasn’t seen on stage behind
a sheath of papers.

Sheila
returned to the programme for its 25th anniversary to speak to Stacey Kent.
This show was broadcast on 4 October 2004.

The other
programme Sheila’s best known for was the late-night Truckers’ Hour. Initially this was just a segment of her weekly You and the Night and the Music show. Apparently
she’d got the idea when on holiday in the States and read about the DJ Big
John Trimble who would broadcast his show from a truck stop on KGA in Spokane,
Washington and then WRVA in Richmond, Virginia. When in May 1981 Sheila went
freelance she introduced Truckers’ Hour
five nights a week between 1 and 2 a.m. It also cashed in on the use of CB
radio amongst the truck driving fraternity and Sheila herself adopted the
handle of Tiger Tim.

In May 1981 an hour was shaved off Round Midnight
to make way for a new series of Truckers' Hour

The first
regular Truckers’ Hour was broadcast
on Tuesday 12 May 1981. I originally posted this online in 2011 and it was
included in a blog post over on 80s Actual but here it is again complete with
mention of Jarrell’s Truck Plaza, a nod to Big John Trimble who broadcast from
the stopover on WRVA.

Eventually
the show was pulled after Sheila was inadvertently reading out some racy
messages. “Some of the blighters send me rude messages and I’ve read them out
without realising”, she claimed. Signing off with “keep the lipstick off your
dipstick” didn’t go down well with the BBC management. The show was dropped in
April 1982, though Trucking with Tracy remained as a feature of YATNAM for a while.

Leaving the
BBC in 2001 Sheila joined Primetime Radio and then Saga Radio with her Swingtime shows. More recently a similar show was broadcast in
the States on Pure Jazz Radio in New York and in the UK on Age Concern’s The
Wireless.

Sheila Tracy
1934-2014

“Tiger Tim
saying thanks for the ride. I’m down and I’m gone.”

There were
tributes to Sheila in this week’s LastWord on BBC Radio 4. Tonight’s Clare Teal show on BBC Radio 2 will also
celebrate her life and career.

Ivy Benson
is remembered in a couple of week’s time on Radio 4 in Ivy Benson: Original Girl Power on Saturday 18 October at 10.30
a.m.Sheila presented Big Band Special between 6 October 1979 and 26 March 2001. Truckers' Hour ran as a stand alone show from 12 May 1981 to 3 April 1982.

Wednesday, 1 October 2014

Tonight listeners in East Anglia get a chance to reminisce
about the former commercial station based in Norwich, Radio Broadland. The
celebrations are over on BBC Radio Norfolk during the last hour of MatthewGudgin’s show.

The reason? It’s thirty years ago today that Broadland
launched and Radio Norfolk isn’t one to miss an anniversary, even if it’s for
“the other side”. Not to mention the fact that Matthew worked on the station
early in his career.

Radio Broadland disappeared in 2009 as part of the so-called
“Heartification” by Global Radio. Here from the RRJ archive is an aircheck of
Stuart Davies with Drivetime from the time the FM service was “Broadland 102”.
The date: Thursday 5 August 1993.

Matthew Gudgin is on air today from 4 to 7 pm. Read more about Radio Broadland here.

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About Me

Hailing originally from Hull and spending most of my life in East Yorkshire I'm now resident in France.
For over 30 years I've been interested in radio, tv and film and have an archive of off-air recordings and radio-related material.
I'm not the Andy Walmsley that designs sets or produces tv programmes.
Professionally I worked in Local Government.
My wife Val works for Beaux Villages Immobilier.